For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2002-307876 (PTL 1) discloses an ID card creation system in which a face image in which the eyes are not closed is selected from a plurality of face images that are obtained by continuously capturing the face of a person whose image is to be photographed, and is thus capable of creating an ID card with an optimum face image in which the eyes are not closed. The ID card creation system described in this PTL 1 is configured to include image-capturing means, a recording medium, a control device, and card creation means. The image-capturing means continuously captures an image of the upper part of the body including the face of the subject for each relevant subject so as to obtain a plurality of pieces of face image information. The recording medium stores the plurality of pieces of face image information of the relevant subjects, which are obtained by the image-capturing means. The control device selects, for each subject, the face image with the most satisfactory eyes open state from among the plurality of pieces of face image data read from the recording medium. The card creation means creates an employee certificate on the basis of the face image data selected by the control device.
Furthermore, International Publication 08/087,914 Pamphlet (PTL 2) discloses an image capturing apparatus that is capable of easily searching for a main image representing continuously captured images from among the plurality of continuously captured images obtained by performing continuous image capture. This image capturing apparatus is configured to include continuous image-capturing means, recording means, and main image selection means. The continuous image-capturing means continuously captures a plurality of images at a predetermined time interval that is determined by continuous image capture conditions that are preset by an image-capturing person. The recording means records image data corresponding to a plurality of captured images that are captured by the continuous image-capturing means as one image file on a recording medium. The main image selection means selects one main image from among the plurality of captured images recorded as one image file on a recording medium. Furthermore, the image capturing apparatus disclosed in PTL 2 is configured to be able to detect the amount of motion of a subject at the time of image capture and select, as a main image, the captured image with the smallest detected amount of motion of the subject. Furthermore, the image capturing apparatus disclosed in PTL 2 is configured in such a manner that whether or not a subject has his/her eyes closed is detected by recognizing the face of the subject when image capture is performed, and a captured image in which the eyes are closed is prohibited from being selected as a main image.